Rhodesian colour errors sell for £36k

Spink has concluded its auction of the famous Pierron collection of British Commonwealth colour omissions. The sale spanned 720 lots and raised a total of 470,327.

Two highlights heralded from Singapore, both issued in the 1962-66 time region with depictions of life above and below the coastline's seas.

The first is a particularly striking error: a strip of five horizontal 10c stamps depicting a fish similar to a goldfish with a black stripe - or at least it does on the leftmost stamp.

Singapore fish colour omission error

Moving across the dark colour goes missing entirely leaving only an unrecognisable gold blob. This mint example of a spectacular colour error sold at the top end of its estimate for 7,500 (not including buyer's premium).

The second Singaporean error is a much subtler error on a complete sheet of 15c stamps depicting a seabird against the beautiful blues of sea and sky. The stone hue is missing, which changes the shading on the bird. The sheet, graded as fine, went under the hammer as estimated for 6,000.

The overall highlights of the sale however were the Rhodesian sheets we reported on in advance, which miss out the colours of ochre and red-orange in parts of the sheet. These omissions remove the contrast of land with sea, and the African sunshine, respectively.

Both of these fantastic errors sold as expected for 18,000 apiece, at one of the most varied and interesting colour error auctions of the year.